DEKRA Process Safety Americas Newsletter - May 2017

This edition of our Newsletter includes two related articles:

1. Safe Scale up of Chemical Processes: Integration of Safety Testing in the Product Life Cycle I am sure we can all agree that protecting against overpressure hazards arising from thermal instability and reaction hazards is a pre-requisite for the process industries. This article will summarize the critical phases in the understanding, assessment, and control of runaway reaction hazards, including material characterization, hazard and risk identification, consequence analysis, and safety system specification, design and implementation.

2. Dust Fires and Explosions Caused by Self-Heating - A Complicated but Predictable Phenomenon Self-heating and spontaneous combustion of powders can give rise to significant dust fire and explosion hazards particularly where bulk storage, hot material stacking, and powder accumulations on hot surfaces or heated environments take place. This article discusses a number of laboratory tests that have been developed to predict self-heating hazards under plant-scale conditions taking into consideration the key influencing parameters that affect the actual self-heating for a given material. As you should expect the results of these tests will be used to establish safe operating limits such as operating temperature, critical bulk size, and residence/exposure time.